Monday, August 10, 2009

Farmville FAQ/walkthrough

Take pictures of all of your friends' farms even if they're not your neighbors yet.

Leave one type of each gift your receive in the giftbox, this includes gifts received for earning ribbons. To get a gifted blue ribbon, you need 21 unique gifts so make this a priority before going for any other ribbons.

Do not buy trees or animals, ask your friends to send them to you.

Plant unprofitable seeds only once.

Keep an eye on your friends achievements, filter news by farmville, and get bonuses from their achievements.

Trade off for high profit margin of raspberries is no experience while planting. However, when you figure in 1xp for plowing, rapberries are the best crop until at least level 12.

If you find it annoying to have your avatar running around the whole farm when you're harvesting/plowing/planting, trap him inside 4 hay bales.

You can buy xp by buying buildings and decorations. While the exchange rate on most items is 100:1, plus sell back value, the exchange rate for yellow Hay Bales is 20:1, plus 5 for sell back, making it 19:1. Not counting opening menu and selecting Hay Bales, this way you get 2.5xp per click

Buying xp option 2. This would require more space and spare gas tanks but will cost 10 coins per xp. Use tractor to plow 4 fields, use seeder to seed the 4 fields with Soybeans, delete the fields. Not counting opening menu and selecting Soybenas, you get 2xp per click.

Be helpful. Helping your neighbors earns you 5xp and 20 coins. Click on your neighbors on the bottom menu and select "Visit/Help". After you help a certain number of people, you will only earn 1xp and 5 coins. If you have less neighbors than the limit, click on My Neighbors tab and from there, instead of clicking on the go to neighbor's farm link at the top, scroll down to Pending Request neighbors and do them top to bottom on one day and bottom to top next day. If you have enough confirmed neighbors, start from one end on one day and from the other end next day.

You can now fertilize your neighbors' crops when you visit them. This works only for those farms where there is something in the process of growing. If nothing is planted or the farm is dead, there's nothing to fertilize. Fertilizing increases possible experience earned from visiting neighbors from 0 to 5 to 0 to 10. Now, even if you've reached your quota for helping, you can still earn an additional 5xp for fertilizing. There doesn't seem to be a quota for fertilizing.

Bird Baths and Hay Rolls sell for 100 coins, Horses, for 105. After collecting one of each animal and tree, request from your neighbors Olive trees and those three. Do same yourself too. Personally, I sell everything except for Olive, Date and Pomegranate trees and a few of each seasonal items. I'm also keeping Cherries and Maples, but that's only until I get a blue ribbon.

Ribbons

Knock on Wood - Use Cherries and Maples.

Zoologist - One Chicken Coup and several Dairy farms. Remember, Brown Cows and Pink Cows bring a lot more money.

Architect - This can be completed easily using Rest Tents when you have enough money. In the beginning, do not buy these as you will receive several building for free when you earn other ribbons.

Pack Rat - Don't buy mailboxes, you'll get them free. Easiest way to get this ribbon, fence in your farm.

Animal Shelter - Ask those of your neighbors that you know personally to message or I/M you when they find an animal.

Tree Hugger - Do not buy trees, with the exception of seasonal ones. Ask your neighbors to gift them to you.

Noah's Ark - Do not buy animals either. Again, with the exception of seasonal ones. Adopt and ask your neighbors.

Not Spoiled, Gifted! - Leave one of each gift in the gift box until you get a blue ribbon. This shouldn't take too long. Besides receiving gifts from neighbors, you'll also get gifts from ribbons.

Flower Power and Pretty Garden - Grow flowers around the middle of your farm where your avatar appears. This will insure your visitors will fertilize the flowers first. You can use the flowers in the Garden Shed to earn at least one ribbon, which will also give you another bouquet.

154 comments:

that's so cool that you were able to embed an excel sheet, I haven't thought of using Google docs. I remember wanting to embed an excel sheet, I forgot for what. O, right now I remember, for a different blog, I wanted to make an excel sheet of which college books I have so that people can borrow them, and then I would keep track of who has which. So now I know I can use Google docs, so thanks.

Now about farmville your so funny!

Why would you take pictures of your friends farms?Why would you leave one type of each gift in the gift box?How do you get bonuses from others achievements?Seemed like you learned a lot more stuff than me by playing this game.

Yeah, just click publish and then select HTML to get embed code. You can also embed it as a spreadsheet if you change url to the default one, though then it looks kinda weird because of all the additional menus.

Hey again, Thanks for the replies.Nothings written next to them as requirements other then "Available soon". They do become available before the affordable amount in $ is reached. I currently have the 16x16 farm but was wondering if anyone knew when the next lot of them all become available... anyone?

the one thing missing is the Space to Value of income. You say not to buy any trees or animals but I squeeze 16 Cherry trees into the same plot as 1 Raspberry bush.

I can Harvest those trees for a daily value of 9 according to your chart, but it's 9 x 16 trees for a daily value of 144 compared to planting and plowing the same sized square. plus you never have to plow again, so after you recover your initial investment it all becomes profit... do trees give you experience???

Most people like to have their farm looking nice. Not to mention it's very hard to see when some trees, for example dates, are ready for harvest.This is why they're all in separate columns.

Also, tractors make the whole plowing/planting/harvesting business a lot easier.

Also, the whole size business becomes pointless as you expand. I've expanded to the largest currently available size and am not even using half of it, mostly making my farm look nice. My current income is around 16.5K/day.

At your level, if you only have enough money to plant or to buy something to get a ribbon, go for the ribbon because the xp will probably push you to the next level and you'll get some coins too.

I've been thinking about that but it would be really annoying. Off the top of my head, berries probably wilt quickly. I'm guessing it's also a factor of the growth time. I know I've had sunflowers survive for 2, if not 3 hours.

If you want to expand quickly, start playing Mafia Wars, close to half the people I friended on Mafia Wars groups are also playing Farmville. Even if they don't accept your neighbor request, you can still take a picture of their farm for the Shutterbug ribbon.

found the wilting times here:http://zenne.blogspot.com/2009/07/farmville-on-facebook-math-and-boredom.htmlthat site is crazy informative but I like your layout better. (plus you're the #1 result for farmville walkthrough - you could own this if you wanted to... :)

A big part of what I plant is how often I make it back to facebook. So I might plant Raspberries 3 times one day and then Squash the next if I know I'm not going to check it every day. I wilted Strawberries like three times before I realized I couldn't rely on myself to get back soon enough. Wilting times are super beneficial to people like me who are causal players.

Thanks for the link. 23 hour days? I'd have to update my formulas in that case. Though not before verifying it myself. Makes no sense for growth times to be 4, 8, 12, 16 and then suddenly 23, 46, 69, 92. Also, the daily lottery is always at 12am and not an hour earlier each time.

Took a look at your farm. You know, for someone claiming to be able to fit 9 trees in a square, yours are in a nice line. :-PProblem with trees, and to some extent animals, they were never meant to be placed that close and you'll have no idea which are ripe for harvest and gonna have a hard time click on them too.

As far as google placement, SEO skillz baby. My traffic went from 30, this was mostly from my SQL and ColdFusion posts which are also btw in top 5, to a 180 average with a peak of 280!

I've verified that 1 farmville day is 23 hours and not 24 as I previously assumed. Formulas for all 3 columns have been updated to reflect that.The result is a very slight increase in xp earned and a small to moderate increase in daily profit.

Thanks to Jordan Wright and Maria Filippelli for pointing this out to me.

3xp for 30g (plowing, then planting soybeans), then deleting is technically the 'cheapest' way to buy xp. Of course depends on how highly you value time. Also how come olive trees aren't on the spread sheet?

Nice guide! I have followed most of your tips and I am currently 200ex from level 19, this in 5 days.

I started taking photos of farms while I was at the first levels and was about to tilt when I noticed after taking pictures of 50 farms, that only a much smaller number had gotten registered, even after restarting FV. And offcourse I couldnt know wich of the 50 farmpics were registered. So I took additional 2 pics of each of the 50 farms and then it worked. You should seriously note taking 2 or 3 pics of each of the farm. I dont know if this was a bug or if you are supposed to take 3 though, it was anyhow really ennoying using 30mins for no point the first time.

While I was at ca 8-9 level I had saved up enough coins to buy 250 heybales to get the highest decoration-ribbon + recieving 1250more experience points. Maybe you could put that in your tips also?

plus, quoting from Zynga forums:A crop will wither if you do not harvest it within a time period approximately equal to 20% of the total growing time...

I'm not seeing the Shutterbug Ribbon (or anything else that uses pictures) in my list of available ribbons. Is there some minimum level required for it, or something?

It might also be worth mentioning that Helping your friends is a nice way to gain coins and XP while you're waiting for crops to become ready. For people you're neighbors with, you can do this by simply clicking on their farm - I'm guessing this is once-per-24-hours, but I haven't been playing long enough to check.

More interestingly, for friends who aren't your neighbors yet (either neighbor request pending, or not even requested yet), you can get bulletins asking to help them by clicking on the "My Neighbors" tab. These will appear at the top of the neighbor list, above your actual neighbors. As you get lower on the number of non-neighbor friends, you may need to click on the "My Neighbors" tab several times. I found this particularly useful when I was just starting FarmVille and didn't have any money or neighbors, but had a lot of friends who played. (It also helped me let others know I'd started playing, since you're only allowed a limited number of neighbor requests/day for Facebook.)

They may have removed it because it was too easy to earn. I think it's been missing yesterday too because I remember seeing that weird empty spot on the bottom of last page. Will see what happens next week.

Not sure about the time period. Btw, a FarmVille day is 23 hours, not 24. Once you have a lot of neighbors, you'll notice that after a certain number of "Helping", you'll only get 1xp and 5 coins so I tend to stop at that time and come back next day.

I recommend clicking on them one after the other instead of refreshing the page.

Good points, especially on the part about clicking on them. I think that helping was best for me when I started, as I got to level 6 or so just by helping my various friends (while I was waiting for my first crops to ripen). This allowed me to raspberries faster :D

Don't buy animals or trees, ask your friends to gift them to you. The ones you can buy are crap anyway. Chickens and Cherry trees you can get rid of after getting Knock on Wood and Zoologist ribbons. Other animals you can get rid of after getting Tree Hugger and Noah's Ark ribbons, leave only Goats and a couple Horses and Baby Elephants for animals and for trees, Pomegranate and Date.

To adopt animals, you gotta be fast enough to grab it before someone else does. Though I think more than one person can adopt same animal. I've had at least 2 people adopt one of mine. Judging by Mafia Wars, could be as many as 10 people per animal.

Yeah, looks like Crop Whisperer was added Saturday evening. I haven't seen anything on the news feed or ingame about any fertilizing. I hope they don't mean leaving some fertilizer on your neighbors' farms, aka taking a dump in the field, because in that case I would like to ask everyone to refrain from fertilizing my crops. ;-)

What is the limit on the neighbors you're allowed to request per day? Seems as if I've only been allowed to request 5 some days, and sometimes it seems as if it's 2 days before I can request neighbors again?!

For fertilizing, you just need to go to a friend's farm. After it gives you the "Help this friend", if they have any crops that can be fertilized (between 0% and 99% grown and not fertilized), you'll be able to fertilize up to 5 crops for free. I don't know if the timer on this is once per 23 hours, or once per 46 - I know it's at least 23 hours. Fertilized crop give 1 XP when harvested. (It'll show up in the lower-left hand corner if you can do it.) You also get 4 coins and 1 XP when *YOU* fertilize a friend's crops (per crop, so up to 20 coins and 5 XP per friend).

Also, Moshe, while you get significantly less XP/coins for helping beyond the cutoff (it appears to be 20 people for me), I think it might still be worthwhile if you're trying to get the Good Samaritan and Crop Whisperer ribbons (since you'll be able to do more per day, effectively) ... and you can still get an additional 20 coins and 5 XP per friend from fertilizing crops. That's just my opinion, though.

Bird baths are a good idea for beginners, though first it's best to collect one of each tree and animal for the ribbons. Afterwards, can request olive trees from high levels and birdbaths from low.I actually end up selling most of my gifts anyway, except for date, pomegranate and olive trees.Will update faq with your idea. Though Zynga might decide to get rid of this.

I'm 99% sure it was a brown egg; a friend of mine hatched a brown egg that I produced. I've started adding the comment "Please let me know what you get" to the Facebook notifications.

Random note: I'm working on getting a lot of Masteries, and I've found that Sunflowers and Grapes go really fast and keep a high profitability rate (although you take a hit to XP). Pumpkins and Cranberries also go well, but aren't as profitable. (I currently have Tomato, Sunflower, Pumpkin, and Cranberry, and should have Graps by this time tomorrow.)

I recommend doing the Sunflower mastery if you're trying to get the Flower Power ribbon ... note that the Blue Ribbon takes 25,000 harvests (which takes forever) but Sunflower mastery should be enough to take you to the red ribbon.

I keep forgetting to add to the faq Farmville's little extortion racket, aka fuel. You get 1 FV per level or you pay money. Right now, with the addition of storage, the only reasonable thing to spend FV on is storage buildings because they have a lot more slots than the regular buildings. Acai trees look like a good investment, but when you consider you only get one tree, it's a waste.

As far as getting fuel, you get it from eggs. I got 20 fuel refills from a golden egg.

Did you look at the eggs part of the faq? Golden chickens come from black and golden eggs of your neighbors. btw, when I said 20 fuel from golden eggs, it's from golden eggs of your neighbors, you can't actually hatch your own eggs.

I would like to point out that you make a higher profit per plot from trees and animals...in example.. if you have 16 Olive trees in a plot you will have a daily take of over 450 coins..or say a resonable animal like a black sheep, you can fit 16 of them in a plot giving you a daily intake fof over 300 coins

Someone already mentioned this. Difference is that you don't get xp for animals or trees. Besides that, while it's easy to see when animals are ready to harvest, it's very hard to see when trees are when they're bunched together. And black sheep give you a very low profit.

I've noticed when fertilizing neighbors plots that sometimes clicking on the first plot to fertilize it doesn't do it. You then click on 4 subsequent plots just fine but end up with 1 fertilizer bag left over.Anybody know why this is happening?

The fertilizer bug does seem to have something to do with page loading times. I was able to use CheatEngine 5.5 and enable the "Speed Hack" feature. This loads the pages (and all other functionality like plowing, havesting, and seeding) a lot faster when set to 4.0 versus 1.0 (normal speed). Keep in mind this isn't a cheat, it just speeds up the operation of the application.

According to TOS it probably is a cheat. I wish everyone would use avatar traps. That speeds up everything too.

I'm kinda sick of the game. Too much clicking and not enough group harvest buildings. Instead of wasting time on decorations, how about some buildings for the other animals. And they can add groves for trees. At the very least they could make harvesting of animals and trees be single click.

why are the plots not showing in my farm? last night i used the tractor to harvest thne the seeder to plant then afterwards the plots are already gone.i thought it was just a sserver error until i opened again the day after it is still the same.what am i gonna do?

One thing I notice you seem to be missing about the chickens & the chicken coup...

When you get a chicken coup and start filling it remove the "lesser chickens" and replace them with more "profitable chickens". For example, if your coup is full of white chickens and you get a brown chicken, remove a white one and add the brown one. Same goes for getting a golden chicken.

The reason for this is when a mystery egg is awarded the color of the egg is chosen by the majority vote of colored chickens. If you have more white than black you're more likely to get a white egg. If you have mostly gold and a few of each color you'll most likely get a golden egg.

What I've done is create a "list" in Facebook called "Farmies" and add all my FarmVille & FarmTown friends to it to quickly check for adopted animals and other profitables. I'm very new to Facebook (2 weeks) and already at level 21. If you can filter out game-specific "published alerts" I'd love to know how!

Instead of using four fences to block in my avatar (to speed up the game slightly) I've surrounded him with 12 hay bales which only takes up one square compared to 4 squares with fence panels. I know this costs a little extra but I prefer to have maximum growing space :)

Your website has been VERY helpful. Question for you - when I try to add a new neighbor I get the following error:Sorry, you have run out of requests to send with this application. Please try again tomorrow.Is this because I have so many pending neighbors? Is there a way to delete pending neighbors?